We think of growing up as something that happens in stages. The conventional stages of the human life cycle include infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, and old age. While in reality there are no strict boundaries between them, we celebrate the crossing of their imaginary borders in rituals like baby showers, christenings, bar mitzvahs, commencements, weddings, and retirement banquets. Within the stages marked by those borders, we become responsible for different parts of our culture- and our scripts and our audiences are modified as we grow.

If we think of folklife as a kind of embroidering on the chores of being- ...